Dear Mom,

Traveling back to our old hometown last week got me thinking about everything you taught me. I could almost hear your voice reading those Old Testament stories, which I still love so much. Lately, as I’ve kept studying those same stories, my understanding has grown in a way that gently differs from what I learned before.

I remember you teaching me as a child that Israel was special, that God had a unique and separate plan for them that He would fulfill in the future. I held onto that for a long time. But as I’ve studied the Scriptures more, I’ve come to see the story differently. It’s not that God has revoked His promises to Israel, but that I believe He fulfills them in a way that includes all His people in Christ. It’s not about two plans, but one single, glorious purpose unfolding through history.

God promised Abraham: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Paul explains this mystery, showing that the blessing comes through union with Christ, the singular Head of the body. He writes, “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7). And again, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29). We don’t become spiritual Jews; Jew and Gentile together become one new humanity in Christ, sharing in the inheritance as a single body under one Head.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better” (Heb. 8:6). This isn’t a different covenant for a different people, but the same covenant of grace fulfilled and perfected in Jesus, the one Mediator. This is where Paul’s warning in Romans 11 is so vital: he describes physical Israel not as a separate plan, but as the natural branches of the olive tree. Those who rejected Christ in unbelief were cut off, and we wild olive branches (Gentiles) were grafted in by faith. The tree itself—the one people of God defined by promise and faith—remains singular, with its roots and life flowing from Christ alone.

Calvin, commenting on this, put it beautifully: “All the saints, from the beginning of the world, have been partakers of the same covenant and truly united to God by the same bond of faith.” The unity is in Christ the Head; the division is between belief and unbelief, not between two eternally separate peoples of God.

Mom, this is why the more I study, the more I see one unbreakable story of grace. To split Israel and the Church is to create two separate trees where God has planted only one. It would mean God has two brides, two distinct bodies for one Head. But Scripture tells us there is one olive tree, one Shepherd and one flock, one covenant of grace spanning all ages, and one people of God—composed of all, both Jew and Gentile, who are united to Christ by faith. The promise made to Abraham finds its yes and amen in Jesus, and to divide it is to miss the glorious, unified whole of the gospel itself.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• Genesis 12:3
• Galatians 3:7–9, 29
• Hebrews 8:6
• Ephesians 4:4–6